System for text assisted telephony

ABSTRACT

A system and method for providing captioned services comprising a relay, an assisted user&#39;s captioned device including a processor programmed to perform the steps of establishing a first communication link between the captioned device and a hearing person&#39;s device, receiving voice signals from the hearing person via the first communication link, receive an indication that an activator has been activated to invoke a captioning service and in response transmitting the hearing user&#39;s voice signals received at the captioned device to a relay via a second communication link, receiving text back corresponding to the hearing user&#39;s voice signals from the relay and displaying the text wherein the assisted user can invoke the captioning service either prior to or after the first communication link is established.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/486,205 filed on Jun. 1, 2012 which is titled “System For TextAssisted Telephony” which is a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 8,213,578filed Dec. 13, 2007, which is a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 7,319,740filed Oct. 25, 2005, which is a continuation of application Ser. No.10/634,965 filed Aug. 5, 2003, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,003,082, which is acontinuation of application Ser. No. 09/938,194 filed on Aug. 23, 2001,now U.S. Pat. No. 6,603,835.

STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT

Not applicable.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the general field of telephonecommunications. In more particular, the invention relates to systems toassist telephone communications by those persons who are deaf, hard ofhearing, or otherwise have impaired hearing capability.

Most modern human communications in both social and businessenvironments takes place through sound communications. Yet within modernsociety there are many persons who have attenuated hearing capability.To assist those persons in making use of our telephonic communicationsystem built for the hearing majority, there has been developed a systemof telephone communication which has been principally used by the deafcommunity. That system makes use of a category of device known variouslyas a telecommunication device for the deaf (TDD), text telephone (TT) orteletype (TTY). Current TDDs are electronic devices consisting of a keyboard and a display as well as a specific type of modem, to acousticallyor directly couple to the telephone line. Modern TDDs permit the user totype characters into their keyboard, with the character strings thenencoded and transmitted over the telephone line to be displayed on thedisplay of a communicating or remote TDD device.

Most TDD communication is conducted in an idiosyncratic code specific tothe community of TDD users. This code, known as Baudot, evolvedhistorically at a time when many telecommunication devices for the deafwere based on mechanical or electromechanical devices rather than thecurrent technology based on digital electronic components. Accordingly,the Baudot protocol was constructed for a set of constraints which areno longer relevant to present date devices. The original Baudot protocolwas a unidirectional or simplex system of communication conducted at45.5 Baud. The conventional Baudot character set was a character setconsisting of 5 bit characters and the system encodes the bits of thosecharacters in a two-tonal system based on carrier tones of 1400 and 1800Hertz.

The system of TDD communications is widely used and in fact has becomeindispensable to the deaf community throughout the industrialized world.Deaf persons extensively communicate with their neighbors and with otherdeaf and hearing people remotely, using the TDD system. In addition,systems have been developed to facilitate the exchange of communicationbetween the deaf community and hearing users who do not have access toor utilize a TDD device. In the United States, telephone companies haveset up a service referred to as a “relay.” A relay, as the term is usedherein, refers to a system of voice to TDD communication in which anoperator, referred to as a “call assistant, ” serves as a humanintermediary between a hearing user and a deaf person. Normally the callassistant wears a headset that communicates by voice with the hearinguser and also has access to a TDD device which can communicate to thedeaf user using a TDD appropriate protocol. In normal relay operationsin the prior art, the call assistant types at a TDD keyboard the wordswhich are voiced to her by the hearing user and then voices to thehearing user the words that the call assistant sees upon the display ofhis or her TDD. The call assistant serves, in essence, as aninterpreting intermediary between the deaf person and the hearing personto translate from voice to digital electronic forms of communication.

A system to assist users of the telephone system who are hard of hearingbut not deaf has been described. This system, sometimes referred to astext enhanced telephony, makes use of the existence of relays tosupplement telephone communications for users who can hear, but haveattenuated hearing capabilities. This systems includes, in its simplestembodiment, a visually readable display connected in series between thetelephone used by the assisted user and the connection to the telephonenetwork. The text enhanced telephone call is connected through a relaywhich transmits both the voice of the hearing user at the other end anda text stream of the words spoken by that user on the same telephoneline. The details of the concept and of some embodiments of that systemare disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,842, the disclosure of which ishereby incorporated by reference.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is summarized in that a relay system to facilitatethe translation of information and communication between deaf andhearing persons includes a call assistant who re-voices the words of thehearing person which are spoken to the call assistant. The words spokenby the call assistant are recognized by a speech recognition computerprogram which has been trained to the voice pattern of the callassistant, such that the words are promptly translated into a high speeddigital communication protocol. That high speed digital communicationmessage is then transmitted electronically promptly by telephone to avisual display accessible to the deaf person.

It is an advantage of the invention described herein that the callassistant does not have to type most, if any, of the words spoken by thehearing person in the communication session so that the overall speed ofcommunications from the hearing person to the deaf person isdramatically increased.

It is an object of the present invention that the design and utilizationof a relay operated in accordance with the protocols described hereinpermits the introduction of small hand-held personal interpreter whichwill enable on the spot communications between deaf persons and hearingpersons wherever the deaf persons might go.

Other objects, advantages and features of the present invention willbecome apparent from the following specification when taken inconjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of a re-voicing relay.

FIG. 2 is an exterior view of a personal interpreter enabled by therelay of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram of the personal interpreter of FIG.2.

FIG. 4 illustrates the operation of a captioned telephone servicesupported by a relay.

FIG. 5 is a schematic illustration of the concept of the two wirecaptioned telephone device connection with sound inter-connection.

FIG. 6 is a schematic illustration of the connection of a personalinterpreter/captioned telephone device connected to two telephone lines.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is intended to provide an alternative arrangementfor the delivery of text assisted telephone services, also calledcaptioned telephone, to a telephone system user with diminished hearing.The present system is intended to take advantage of two developments inthe field of assisted telephone services, the personal interpreter andthe re-voicing relay. The arrangement for using these capabilities hereis designed not to provide text services for the profoundly deaf, but toprovide a text assistance service for those who can hear, but who mayhave diminished hearing. This service is designed to supplement ratherthan replace the transmission of the spoken voice word to the assisteduser. To assist understanding what is contemplated here, the basictechnologies of the personal interpreter and the re-voicing relay willbe described here first, after which the description will return to themain topic, text assisted telephone services or, as they are also known,captioned telephone services.

The personal interpreter is intended to be a small portable devicecapable of delivering, with the support of a relay, text to a deaf userof any human conversation occurring in the presence of the personalinterpreter. The personal interpreter is set up to connecttelephonically to a relay, transmit spoken words to the relay, and thendisplay for the assisted user the text of the words transmitted over thetelephone connection to the relay. To make the personal interpreter workmore seamlessly to produce more conversation-like communication, afaster relay methodology was needed. To fill this need, the re-voicingrelay was designed.

The re-voicing relay is based upon the underlying technology of usingvoice recognition software, operated by a call assistant (a “CA”), toassist in the voice to text translation inherent in providing relayservices. The re-voicing strategy is described in U.S. Pat. No.5,909,482, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.The re-voicing relay has its first implementation in providing voice totext transcription services for the deaf. However, the relay voice totext transcription service has use for users other than those who aredeaf. It is envisioned that there are a number of hearing or partiallyhearing users who would have reason to benefit from voice to texttranscription services. Relay voice to text service might also be usefulfor any application in which it is desired to supplement voicecommunications by a text transcription of the voice spoken on thetelephone. Thus, while the operation of the relay will sometimes bedescribed here by referring to an “assisted user,” who may be deaf orhard of hearing, but who also may be a normally hearing person whosimply wants text assistance for some reason. The user at the other endof the line will be referred to here as the hearing user, simply for thepurpose of having something to call that person, even though both usersmay be hearing.

Personal Interpreter

Shown in FIG. 2 is an illustration of what a personal interpreter 10 canlook like. This would be a small hand held device typically the size ofa small hardbound book. It would have a keyboard of minimal size, butuseable by a deaf person who can type. It would have a two or four linedisplay, but the display could be any size that conveniently fits in thecase of the device. The device would also have a key or switch whichwould initiate its operation.

Shown in FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram of the internal mechanicsof the personal interpreter. The personal interpreter keyboard shown at12 and its display as shown at 14. Inside the interpreter itself is amicroprocessor shown at 16. Not shown, but included within the personalinterpreter, would be the appropriate memory and interface devices so asto allow the microprocessor to be programmed and to operate the personalinterpreter and perform its functions, in a manner well known in theart. Also inside of the personal interpreter is a modem 18. The modem 18is preferably a modem specifically designed for interface with the deaftelecommunications system. Most telecommunications with the deafcommunity are conducted using a Baudot type code. One useful alternativeis for the modem be designed to use the enhanced form of Baudotcommunication known as “Turbo Code” (Ultratec), which is generallydescribed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,432,837, 5,517,548, and 5,327,479, thedisclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Anotheralternative is that the modem use a new variant of Turbo Code, one whichuses higher carrier frequencies (in the range of 3000-3500 hertz) and afaster baud rate (over 100 baud). The most preferred alternative is forthe modem to use a digital communication protocol which can bothtransmit and receive digital packets which contain either or both ofvoice and text. The output of the modem is preferably wired to acellular telephone 20 included within the case of the personalinterpreter 10. The cellular telephone 20 has a suitable antennaprovided on it so that it may dial a cellular telephone network by radiofrequency communications of the type normally conducted by cellulartelephones. The personal interpreter also includes jack 28 to connect toa conventional wired or land-line telephone line as well. The personalinterpreter also includes a microphone 22 and a speaker 24. A filter 26connects the speaker 24 and the microphone 22 to the telephone 20.

A brief description of the operation and functionality of the personalinterpreter reveals the dramatic improvement and convenience andportability that this device gives to text assisted people. A assisteduser could go into an establishment, be it a government office or retailfacility, in which there are only hearing persons. The assisted personwould carry with him or her the personal interpreter 10. The assisteduser would then place the personal interpreter 10 upon a counter orother surface, open it up, and press the initiation key or start button.The microprocessor 16 and modem 18 of the personal interpreter thenpower up and act in many ways like a normal TDD device operating intelecommunication standard, such as Turbo code. However, there is onecritical difference. The start or initiation key further causes themicroprocessor 16 of the personal interpreter to dial a relay to set upa relay communication session and includes in its communication with therelay a message, using the enhanced command features available inadvanced telecommunication protocols, such as Turbo Code, to initiate aspecial format of relay call adapted for the personal interpreter. Othercodes which permit command functions, such as ASCII or CCITT, could alsobe used. The first operation is to activate the cellular telephone anddirect the cellular telephone to dial the number of a relay operating inaccordance with the method of the present invention. The cellulartelephone dials the relay. Obviously, no wired connection is required toallow the cellular telephone function to establish a telephoneconnection with the remote relay, but alternatively the jack 28 to aconventional telephone line could be used. In addition, when the relayanswers the telephone connection, the microprocessor 16 of the personalinterpreter 10 is instructed to provide command codes to the remoterelay. These command codes, a feature possible through the use of TurboCode, permits the personal interpreter to tell the relay that this is apersonal interpreter-type relay communication session. All of this canhappen in the time necessary to initiate the cellular call, perhaps twoto ten seconds.

Then, the assisted person can use the personal interpreter to translatewords spoken by hearing persons in the presence of the personalinterpreter into visually readable text. This is done by the personalinterpreter 10 through an unseen relay. Words spoken by the hearingpersons in the presence of the personal interpreter 10 are picked up bythe microphone 22. Those words are then transmitted through the cellulartelephone 20 to the remote relay. The relay, operating as will bedescribed below, then immediately transmits back, in enhanced TurboCode, a digital communication stream translating the words that werejust spoken. The words are received by the modem 18, and themicroprocessor 16 in the personal interpreter 10, and it is displayedpromptly upon the display screen 14. If the assisted person can speak,he or she may then answer the hearing person with a spoken voice, or,the assisted person may alternatively type upon the keyboard 12. If theassisted user types on the keyboard 12, the personal interpretertransmits the communication by digital communication to the relay. Thecall assistant at the relay then reads and speaks the words typed by theassisted user which are transmitted to the speaker 22 contained in thepersonal interpreter into a voice communication which can be understoodby the hearing users. The filter 26 filters out the digitalcommunication frequencies from the sound generated by the speaker 22.Thus, in essence, the assisted person has a personal interpreteravailable to him or her at all times of the day or night wherever theassisted person is within the range of the cellular telephone system.Also, because the relay is preferably operating in accordance with thefast translation methodology described below, a very conversation-likefeel can occur in the communication session between the assisted userand the hearing persons in the presence of the personal interpreter 10.In order for this communication session to be satisfactory to thehearing users as well as the assisted person, however, the relay mustoperate exceedingly rapidly. It is, in part, to meet the need for theexceeding rapidity of this conversational style of communication thatthe re-voicing relay protocol has been designed.

Re-Voicing Relay

Shown in FIG. 1 is a relay intended to provide the voice to textcapability to support the personal interpreter, and which can alsosupport other voice to text services to provide services for assistedusers. FIG. 1 is intended to show, in schematic fashion, how such arelay system can be set up. Shown at 32 is a telephone of a hearingperson. Instead of a telephone of a hearing person, the input could alsobe the microphone of the personal interpreter 10 shown in FIGS. 2 and 3.The telephone of the hearing person 32 is connected through a telephoneline 34 to a voice input buffer 36 at the relay. The telephone line 34can be an actual physical land line, or two pair between the telephones,or can be a cellular or other over-the-air telephone linkage. The voiceinput buffer 36 is a simple buffer to ensure temporary capture of thevoice in the event that the call assistant gets behind and needs tobuffer or delay the voice of the hearing person. In any event, theoutput of the input voice buffer 36 is provided to a headset 40 whereearphones 38 produce the sound of the remote speaking person in the earof the call assistant. The call assistant is wearing the headset 40 andsitting at a computer 42 capable of communicating in an enhanced Baudotcommunication, such as Turbo Code or whatever other code protocol isbeing used. However, typically the call assistant does not type thewords which the call assistant hears in his or her earphone 38. Instead,the call assistant then speaks the words which he or she hears in theearphones 38 into a microphone 39 in the headset 40. The microphone 39on the headset 40 is connected to transmit the voice of the callassistant to the computer 42 at which the call assistant sits.

Captioned Telephone

As mentioned earlier, captioned telephone is a technology intended toprovide text assistance to assisted user during the course of a voicetelephone communication session. As will become apparent from thediscussion below, a captioned telephone connection can be a single lineconnection or a multiple line connection. There are advantages anddisadvantages of each approach. A single line connection is known in theart, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,842, mentioned previously.The advantages and details of the use of a multiple line connection aredescribed below. The discussion of captioned telephone will begin with asingle line connection.

Shown in FIG. 4 is an illustration of how a typical telephone callinvolving a single line captioned telephone would be set up. The hearinguser at telephone 62 communicates through a telephone line 64 with therelay, indicated at 66. The relay, a re-voicing relay, communicatesthrough a telephone line 68 with the assisted user. At the site of theassisted user is a telephone 70 used by the assisted user and also acaptioned telephone device 72. The telephone 70 is conventional. Thecaptioned telephone device 72 is constructed to accomplish twoobjectives. One objective is to filter, or separate, the digital signalscarrying the text information from the voice signal. The other objectiveis to take the digital signals and create a visual display of the textinformation for the assisted user. This device is thus intended toassist the user to understand a greater portion of the conversation byproviding a visually readable transcription of the text of the telephoneconversation so that the assisted user can read any words that he or shecannot hear properly. While the captioned telephone device 72 of FIG. 4is illustrated as a separate stand-alone device from the telephone 70,those of skill in the art can readily appreciate that the two functionscan be combined in a special capability telephone station. Such aspecial purpose station can both provide conventional telephone serviceand also include a display which can be used to provide captioning foran assisted user.

The two line captioned telephone is indicated in FIG. 5. In its simplestembodiment, the two-line captioned telephone can be conceptually thoughtof as a personal interpreter used to provide text assistance to atelephone user. Thus in FIG. 5, the telephone of the hearing user 62 andthe telephone of the assisted user 70 are connected directly by a simplesingle telephone connection, indicated by the telephone line 64. Theassisted user then uses a personal interpreter/captioned telephone(“PICT”) device 74 to connect to a relay 76 over a second telephone lineor connection, indicated at 78. There must be some form of communicationbetween the telephone of the assisted user 70 and the PICT device 74, sothat the voice of the hearing user can be transferred to the secondtelephone line 78 to the relay 76. At its simplest, the connection canbe a simple acoustic connection, such as placing the sound pick-upmicrophone of the PICT device in such a location that the sound of thehearing person's voice is picked up and transmitted to the relay. Amicrophone connected to the PICT device 74 could be placed on thehandset of the assisted user' s telephone 70. However, it is preferredthat the PICT device be electronically connected to the telephone of theassisted user so that the voice of the hearing user can be transmittedto the relay call assistant with minimal interference or noise. The PICTdevice includes a visually readable display and suitable decodingelectronics and software so that the device can receive and display atext stream received from the relay over the second telephone line.

The main advantage of the two-line approach to captioned telephone isthat the captioned telephone service can be added to a telephone callalready in progress. By contrast, to use single line captioned telephonefor an incoming call, the call must be directed through the relay to theassisted user at the beginning of the call. For a two-line captionedtelephone call, however, the call can be started as a normal telephonecommunication session, without the relay or the captioning. Then, if theassisted user decides captioning would be helpful to his or herunderstanding of the conversation, the captioning service can be addedwhile the call is in progress. To add the captioning service, theassisted user simply has the PICT device dial the relay over the secondtelephone line. The voice of the hearing user is then transmitted overthe second telephone line to the relay. The relay converts the voice totext and the text stream created by the relay returns to the assisteduser, also over the second telephone line. Note that in thisarrangement, as indicated in FIG. 5, voice and text are transmitted inopposite directions over a single telephone line between the PICT deviceand the relay, voice going to the relay and text returning on the sameline. This arrangement of voice and text is the same as used for thepersonal interpreter.

One device intended to implement the two-line captioned telephoneapproach is illustrated in FIG. 6. The PICT device 80 of FIG. 6 is ananalog device connected in series between the telephone line 64 to thehearing user and the telephone 70 of the assisted user. As seen in FIG.6, the telephone line 64 is connected directly through the PICT device80 to the telephone 70. However, that telephone connection is alsoconnected through a transformer 82 to a 2-wire to 4-wire converter 84.Connected to the output of the converter 84 is a low pass filter 86, theoutput of which is the input to an amplifier 88. The output of theamplifier 88 is connected to a 2-wire to 4-wire converter 89 whichconnects, in turn, to the telephone line 78 which connects to the relay(not shown here). The input signals from the telephone line 78 areconnected to a hi-pass filter 90, the output of which passes through areceive modem 92 to a microcontroller 94. The microcontroller operatesthe display 96. The microcontroller also includes the capability togenerate DTMF dialing tones and impress those tones on the telephoneline 78 when it is time to dial the relay. Thus here the single PICTdevice 80 connects to two telephone lines. A call can be initiated orreceived by the assisted user in the same manner as with a conventionaltelephone, using only the first telephone line 64. When the user wishesto invoke the captioning service, the assisted user presses a button,97, on the PICT device 80 that causes the device to automatically dialthe relay on the second telephone line 78. The PICT device automaticallytransmits the voice signals on the first telephone line to the secondtelephone line (through the low-pass filter 86) for transmission to therelay. At the relay, the voice is converted into text and a text streamis sent back down the telephone connection 78 to the PICT device. ThePICT device filters the text data, at the hi-pass filter 90, andtransmits it to the microcontroller 94 for display to the user. None ofthe text data, and no digital carrier signals, are heard by either thehearing user or the assisted user. Normally the hearing user does noteven need to be aware that captioning is being used on the call.

This example assumes that the digital carrier signals for the textmessage are carried on high frequencies, and the low pass and high passfilters are used to separate voice from text. While this filtering canbe implemented as an analog filter, in many telephonic systems today,digital forms of communication are used. Using a digital communicationprotocol between the relay and the PICT device, communication is in theform of digital data packets of either text or digitized voice. In thatevent, the logical filtering simply consists of not creating anyacoustic noise from the packets designated as carrying text.

Several physical versions of the PICT device are contemplated. In theversion illustrated in FIG. 5, the PICT device is a stand-aloneappliance inserted in series between the telephone of the assisted userand the telephone jack on the wall of the user's home. It may also beconvenient for the user to package the PICT device as a single two-lineunit intended to provide both conventional telephone service, as well ascaptioned telephone services. The device could look like a normaltelephone, but have a display. The captioned telephone feature would beactivated by a button or key, which would cause the unit to dial apre-selected relay and set up a captioning session, whether or not acall on the other line is yet in progress. The voice signals incoming onthe first telephone line from the hearing user would be transferredelectronically to the telephone line to the relay. Text signals would betransmitted on that same telephone line back from the relay to the PICTdevice, which would display that text for the assisted user. Since there-voicing relay operates with only a very slight time delay, the textdisplay for the assisted user would trail the hearing person's voiceslightly, but the text would still assist the user in comprehending theconversation.

It is a desirable feature of the two-line captioned telephonearrangement that the use of the captioning service is transparent to thehearing user. The hearing user would dial to connect to the assisteduser as with any other telephone user. The assisted user invokes thecaptioned telephone service without the need to involve the hearing userat all. The service can be used equally well and transparently for bothincoming and outgoing calls.

It is also envisioned that the captioned telephone service can beimplemented in a way that uses three telephone lines. One line is forvoice communications with the hearing user. The second line is directlyconnected to the first line so that the voice of the hearing user istransmitted to the relay. The third line is a connection to transmit thetext stream from the relay to the station of the assisted user.

In the implementation of a relay providing captioned telephone service,the relay receives the voice of the hearing user and transmits both adigital text message stream and the voice of the hearing user over atelephone connection to the station of the assisted user. It is to beunderstood, however, that a conventional telephone single lineconnection is only one example of a telephonic connection that can beused in this arrangement. Digital wireless connection, or PCSconnection, or even internet protocol (IP), wired or wireless connectioncan be used to connect the relay to the assisted user, so long as theconnection in capable of transmitting voice to that user.

Thus the term telephone line as used in this specification is intendednot only to apply to a traditional land-line two-wire telephone line,but also to all equivalents that offer similar functionality. Each ofthe telephone lines could be, for example, a portion of the bandwidth ofan ISDN or DSL service. The telephone line could be an analog or digitalcellular telephone link or a PCS connection. The PICT device could alsobe connected to the internet communication in IP, and in that event thetwo telephone lines would simply be simultaneous digital data exchangewith two remote locations.

It is to be understood that the present invention is not limited to theparticular illustrations and embodiments disclosed above, but embracesall such modified forms thereof as come within the scope of thefollowing claims.

I/We claim:
 1. A system for providing text captioned telephony services to an assisted user communicating with a hearing person, the system comprising: a relay; an assisted user's captioned device comprising: (i) a captioned device processor linkable to first and second communication links; (ii) a visual display linked to the captioned device processor; (iii) a microphone linked to the captioned device processor for receiving voice signals from an assisted user using the assisted user's captioned device; (iv) a speaker linked to the captioned device processor for broadcasting voice signals received by the captioned device to the ear of the assisted user as the voice signals from the hearing person are received at the captioned device; (v) an activator linked to the captioned device processor, the activator controllable by an assisted user to invoke a captioning service; the captioned device processor programmed to perform the steps of: (i) establishing the communication link between the assisted user's captioned device and a hearing person's device; (ii) obtaining voice signals from the assisted user via the microphone; (iii) transmitting the assisted user's voice signals from the captioned device to the hearing person's device via the first communication link; (iv) receiving voice signals from the hearing person via the first communication link; (v) broadcasting the voice signals from the hearing person via the speaker to the assisted user as the voice signals from the hearing person are received at the captioned device; (vi) receiving a signal from the actuator to invoke the captioning service; (vii) in response to signal from the actuator: (a) transmitting the hearing user's voice signals received at the captioned device to the relay via the second communication link; (b) receiving text corresponding to the hearing user's voice signals from the relay via the second communication link; and (c) displaying the text received from the relay via the visual display for the assisted user to view; wherein the activator is activatable to establish the second communication link and invoke the captioning service subsequent to broadcasting at least some voice signals from the hearing person to the assisted user while a voice call between the assisted user and the hearing person is progressing; and wherein the activator is further activatable to establish the second communication link and invoke the captioning service prior to broadcasting at least some of the hearing person's voice signals to the assisted user.
 2. The system of claim 1 wherein the activator is activatable to invoke the captioning service prior to establishing the first communication link between the assisted user's captioned device and a hearing person's device.
 3. The system of claim 2 wherein activation of the activator prior to establishing the first communication link causes the captioned device processor to invoke the captioning service prior to broadcast of any of the hearing user's voice signals to the ear of the assisted user.
 4. The system of claim 3 wherein activation of the activator prior to establishing the first communication link causes the captioned device processor to establish the second communication link to the relay.
 5. The system of claim 4 wherein the relay is a preselected relay associated with the assisted user's captioned device.
 6. The system of claim 5 wherein the hearing user's voice signals are transmitted to the relay via the second communication link as digital data packets and wherein the text is transmitted from the relay to the assisted user's captioned device as digital data packets.
 7. The system of claim 6 wherein the step of receiving text from the relay includes receiving the text via the second communication link.
 8. The system of claim 7 wherein the relay is remote from each of the assisted user's captioned device and the hearing person's device.
 9. The system of claim 1 wherein the activator includes a button on the assisted user's captioned device.
 10. The system of claim 1 further including the steps of receiving voice signals from the call assistant that revoice the hearing user's voice signals, using software trained to the voice of the call assistant to transcribe the voice signals from the call assistant into a text stream, presenting the text stream via a display to the call assistant, receiving corrections to the text stream from the call assistant and transmitting the corrected text to the assisted user's captioned device.
 11. The system of claim 1 wherein the step of establishing the first communication link includes receiving an indication from the assisted user's captioned device invoking the first communication link.
 12. A system for providing captioned services to an assisted user communicating with a hearing person, the system comprising: an assisted user's captioned device comprising: (i) a captioned device processor linkable to first and second communication links; (ii) a visual display linked to the captioned device processor; (iii) a speaker linked to the captioned device processor for broadcasting voice signals received by the captioned device to the ear of the assisted user substantially in real time as the voice signals from the hearing person are received at the captioned device; (iv) an activator linked to the captioned device processor, the activator controllable by an assisted user to invoke a captioning service through the second communication link; the captioned device processor programmed to perform the steps of: (i) establishing the first communication link between the assisted user's captioned device and a hearing person's device; (ii) receiving voice signals from the hearing person via the first communication link; (iii) broadcasting the voice signals from the hearing person via the speaker to the ear of the assisted user as the voice signals from the hearing person are received at the captioned device; (iv) receiving an indication that the activator has been activated to invoke the captioning service; (v) in response to activation of the activator: (a) establishing the second communication link between the assisted user's device and a relay; (b) transmitting the hearing user's voice signals received at the captioned device from the hearing person to the relay via the second communication link; (c) receiving text corresponding to the hearing user's voice signals from the relay; and (d) displaying the text received from the relay via the visual display for the assisted user to view; wherein the activator is selectable prior to establishing the first communication link to invoke the captioning service prior to any voice communication between the assisted user and the hearing person.
 13. The system of claim 12 wherein the activator is further selectable subsequent to broadcasting at least some voice signals from the hearing person to the ear of the assisted user to set up the captioning service while a voice call between the assisted user and the hearing person is progressing.
 14. The system of claim 13 wherein the assisted user's captioning device is usable without selection of the activator to facilitate a voice call between the assisted user and the hearing person.
 15. The system of claim 12 wherein the relay is a preselected relay associated with the assisted user's captioned device.
 16. The system of claim 12 wherein the hearing user's voice signals are transmitted to the relay via the second communication link as digital data packets and wherein the text is transmitted from the relay to the assisted user's captioned device as digital data packets via the second communication link.
 17. The system of claim 12 wherein the relay is remote from each of the assisted user's captioned device and the hearing person's device.
 18. The system of claim 12 further including a relay wherein, at the relay, only the hearing user's voice signals are presented to the call assistant, the call assistant revoices the hearing user's voice signals, software trained to the voice of the call assistant transcribes the voice signals from the call assistant into a text stream, the text stream is presented via a display to the call assistant, corrections to the text stream are received from the call assistant and the corrected text is transmitted to the assisted user's captioned device.
 19. A method for providing captioned telephony services to an assisted user communicating with a hearing person, the method comprising the steps of: (i) providing an assisted user's captioned device comprising: (a) a captioned device processor linkable to first and second communication links; (b) a visual display linked to the captioned device processor; (c) a speaker linked to the captioned device processor for broadcasting voice signals from a hearing person received by the captioned device to the ear of the assisted user substantially in real time as the voice signals from the hearing person are received at the captioned device; (d) an activator linked to the captioned device processor, the activator controllable by an assisted user to indicate that a captioning service should be invoked; (ii) linking to the first communication link between the assisted user's captioned device and a hearing person's device; (iii) receiving voice signals from the hearing person via the first communication link; (iv) broadcasting the voice signals from the hearing person via the speaker to the ear of the assisted user as the voice signals from the hearing person are received at the captioned device; (v) receiving a signal from the actuator invoking the captioning service; (vi) in response to the signal invoking the captioning service: (a) transmitting the hearing user's voice signals received at the captioned device to a relay via the second communication link; (b) receiving text corresponding to the hearing user's voice signals from the relay; and (c) displaying the text received from the relay via the visual display for the assisted user to view; wherein the activator is selectively selectable to invoke the captioning service prior to establishing the first communication link and subsequent to broadcasting at least some voice signals from the hearing person to the assisted user while a voice call between the assisted user and the hearing person is progressing.
 20. The method of claim 19 further including the steps of, in response to selection of the activator and prior to transmitting the hearing user's voice signals to the relay, establishing the second communication link between the assisted user's captioned device and the relay.
 21. The method of claim 19 wherein the step of receiving text includes receiving the text over a third communication link separate from the first and second communication links.
 22. The method of claim 19 wherein the relay is a preselected relay associated with the assisted user's captioned device.
 23. The method of claim 19 wherein the hearing user's voice signals are transmitted to the relay via the second communication link as digital data packets and wherein the text is transmitted from the relay to the assisted user's captioned device as digital data packets.
 24. The method of claim 19 wherein the relay is remote from each of the assisted user's captioned device and the hearing person's device.
 25. The method of claim 19 wherein the activator includes a button on the assisted user's captioned device.
 26. The method of claim 19 further including the step of, at the relay, presenting only the hearing user's voice signals to the ear of the call assistant, receiving voice signals from the call assistant that revoice the hearing user's voice signals, using software trained to the voice of the call assistant to transcribe the voice signals from the call assistant into a text stream, presenting the text stream via a display to the call assistant, receiving corrections to the text stream from the call assistant and transmitting the corrected text to the assisted user's captioned device.
 27. The method of claim 19 wherein the step of establishing the first communication link includes receiving an indication from the assisted user's captioned device invoking the first communication link.
 28. The method of claim 19 wherein the second communication link is an internet link.
 29. The method of claim 19 wherein the activator is selected to set up the captioning service prior to establishing the first communication link. 